Christian Nonduality

Too often myst-I-cism begins in mist, puts the "I" at the center, and then ends in schism (attributed to Jean Houston).

I'll just quote my response to another correspondent: I would characterize the mystical experience as an experience of 1) ineffability 2) paradoxicality 3) joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction and 4) reality's unitive aspects.

I would further characterize mystical experiences as authentic and inauthentic. The authentic mystical experience has the four above-listed criteria and is processed integrally, which is to say, constrained by other aspects of the integral process of human knowing. Precisely, and by definition, because it is ineffable and paradoxical, it yields no esoteric knowledge regarding the nature of reality (metaphysical, ontological, theological, whatever). In and of itself, it has neither cognitive content nor normative impetus to offer others.

There are many ways to describe the different aspects of the process of human knowing in terms of brain structures and functions, using the technical terms and categories of psychology and cognitive science or of everyday language. However we describe them, we know they work together, not in isolation, each aspect presupposing all others, none making much sense without the others.

These aspects can variously be described, for example, as cognitive, affective & instinctual, as empirical, rational, prudential & social-relational, as descriptive, normative, evaluative & interpretive, or as objective, subjective, interobjective & intersubjective.

It is not the affirmation of each such aspect of human knowing that makes one's approach integral; rather, it is the proper inter-relating of all such aspects that gifts them with their integral nature; it is their holonic inseparability that makes them holistic.

I'll follow with an example of what I consider inauthentic mysticism.

To make this consideration more concrete, let's look at what Ken Wilber says. He claims to holistically embrace objective, subjective, interobjective and intersubjective "domains" of knowledge. That's fine, except that Ken does not view them as mutually limiting, each domain informing and constraining all other domains.

What Wilber is promoting, then, is a plurality of ways or modes of knowing by wrenching each aspect of knowing from its context in the whole and allowing it to swell to madness in its isolation (to borrow phraseology from C.S. Lewis in another context). Each aspect, then, enjoys an unfettered reign in its mode of discovery.

Wilber's intersubjective and transrational "mode" then, goes wherever it wants, probes reality, comes back with reports that are unassailable. What we end up with is an unmitigated arational, gnosticism.

Note fr FB thread:

Daniel Helminiak, protege' of Lonergan, critiques Wilber here: http://bit.ly/okzCI In my view, Wilber seems to unjustifiably conflate knowledge & experience and to confuse being integral with being inclusive. It is necessary to address all known realities in order to be integral, but it is not sufficient; they must also be properly interrelated. ... Read moreHelminiak explicates this.

While the transrational indeed enjoys a certain primacy in some of life's most significant value-realizations, it must not otherwise be considered autonomous from the other rationalities or we have, in effect, an arational gnosticism. There is much to affirm in Wilber's outlook and I have wondered if he and Helminiak could establish more common ground via nuance. After all, Wilber's claim that these epistemic capacities are holonic would seem reconcilable w/ a view that calls for integrality w/o autonomy. I agree that Wilber's approach would be improved by some apophatic tempering.

archiving additional thoughts fr a FB thread:

Jim Arraj, building on Maritain & John of the Cross, draws helpful distinctions at
http://www.innerexplorations.com/philtext/the1.htm
where a philosophical contemplation, intuition of being and natural mysticism are distinguished from mystical contemplation, which is profoundly relational. I've come to the provisional conclusion, though, that such distinctions as between acquired & infused contemplation, or even natural & supernatural mysticism, speak, perhaps, to degrees of realization but certainly not to origins. From another angle, I do believe there can be a loss of the affective ego (cf. Arraj).

We do not know enough about reality to say that it is unknowable per GK Chesterton. What we may not comprehend as a whole, we may certainly apprehend in part, swimming in but not swallowing the mystery (as if the Pacific Ocean could be poured into a teacup). We must also distinguish between a successful "description of" and a successful "reference to" a reality as our symbols alternately & simultaneously conceal & reveal realities. While we may not be able to effable about the Ineffable or easily discourse about the nondiscursive, such realities are still semiotic, which is to say meaning-conveying, in that they shape the contours of our interpretive & evaluative stances, axiologically (changing the values we pursue & realize, or at least changing our value-prioritizations). This axiological-conditioning by one's mystical experience is distinct from cosmological knowledge, which is the currency of our descriptive (positivist) and normative (philosophic) sciences.

archiving more thoughts (redacted fr FB thread) -

The West has often misinterpreted no-self, thinking it expresses an ontology rather than a phenomenal nondual experience. See http://tinyurl.com/noself-experience . Most of the Eastern traditions, including both the Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti schools of Hinduism and the Mahayana school of Buddhism (now the major -larger- schools of these great living traditions), have prominent devotional elements. See http://christiannonduality.com/east_meets_west There is, then, widespread agreement among the major traditions, East & West, regarding the importance of devotionality, hence relationality.

Happily there is a lot less speculative ontology in the East vis a vis monism than many in the West seem to realize; where monism is indeed encountered, it is often highly nuanced & qualified (of course, not always sufficiently).

Abhishiktananda, by his own account, is a case in point in that he considered Advaita an existential experience, not a philosophy (or metaphysic or ontology). His struggle, then, would not resolve conceptually b/c it did not originate there. Integrally, one does not travel w/o concepts but certainly goes beyond them in one's encounters w/reality, where the struggle and tension and anguish often play out more so existentially in one's vital lived experiences & value-realizations, very often transcending any conceptual reductionism.

Abhishiktananda did not so much gift us with forumlae, then, but more so with a witness to the authenticity of mystical experiences as they arose within one who very depthfully engaged the praxes of two great traditions. We learn more from such sages when asking - not what they think regarding reality's essential nature- but, instead, "Teach me how to pray."